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Driving light mounting ideas?


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Hey y'all-- 

 

I have a set of Cyclops driving lights mounted on Denali brackets on the fork lowers, but I'm looking for another way to mount them.  I _think_ the current mounts may not clear when I put my RC36-2 wheel on.

 

I like the idea of having the lights on the forks, though I haven't actually ridden with them yet.  But I'm open to mounting them from the frame somewhere.  IIRC, there's something in the way of moving them above the brakes, near the bottom of the fender.

 

Has anyone come up with a slick mount?  Please post pics.  

 

Thanks

kevin

 

 

Cyclopsdrivinglight-vi.jpg

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Holy smokes! That’s a big light, for down there. That’s an Optimus, right? Maybe, their Aurora might be a better fit?
 

I have their Long Range Extreme lights, on my Tiger 800, and put them on a Skene module to cut their power to 20% on low beam. They’ll sear the retinas of oncoming traffic, at 100%. 
 

I can’t offer much help other than I’ve seen custom brackets sandwiched under the mirrors, on other sport-touring bikes. That position allows for the lights to be more effective, by allowing the beam to cast further down the road. 

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That _is_ a big light, but I'm old and need all the help I can get.  😛  Yes, they're Optimus.  I'm sticking with them - that's a lot of money already spent.  I've got the Skene too.  I do hope they're not so bright as to be unusable.

 

There are all kinds of slick brackets for modern bikes (you probably have one on your Tiger), but if I want to do something, I suspect it'll be designed and built by me.  I hope I can copy off someone else...

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Advanced glaucoma, at 52, so a long road ahead of not being able to see at night. 😕


Without the Skene, they will be unusable. Even at 50%, mine were too bright for oncoming traffic. Since dropping it to 20%, I haven’t been flashed. 
 

The Cyclops were too large of diameter and heavy for the common Tiger brackets. I ended up welding tabs to my crashbars.
 

I have a set of Denali D4 in a box, but, they were worthless for long range vision, which is how I got to the Cyclops. I feel like welding a set of tabs to my lower bars, to use them as ditch lights when I’m on high beam. That would ease the pain of not using something I paid good money for. 

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Hi Kevin:

 

I have had these on for 40,000 miles without issue, 35 watt Halogens. I made the bracket myself from 3/4" aluminum bar and nylon spacers from the Hardware store, only took a few hours to build and install. I took out the auto plastic plugs they used to hold the Fairing together and ran 6mm screws up through them to hold the frame, its only the plastic that holds the whole thing up but I doubt the thing weighs more that 16oz.

 

Living in Maine everyone thinks they are fog lights, which they are when needed, but the real reason I put them on is for Moose, especially this time of year. A Moose can be 7' at the shoulder, 9-10' height of eye, a car or motorcycle headlight will not pick their eyes  up in the dark. Maine does not have game fences like Canada does and our roads around here are not cut back very far so they can be on you in a heartbeat. I have them angled out and up slightly to give me an extra second or so just in case.

 

If interested I can take so more pics and measurements tomorrow

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1 hour ago, CharlieFoxtrot said:

Yes please!  Pictures for sure, and measurements if you want.  Thanks!

Will Do.

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I installed fork lights 2 years ago. I went for low, short, and wide using Rigid Industries SRM - M2. They are adjustable side-to-side and up-and-down. They make the inside of turns light up when I ride at night. Rigid offered a range of light patterns; I chose short shine forward and wide shine side-to-side. YMMV

 

Along with LED headlight bulbs they add hugely to conspicuity.

 

I had a local machinist make these up for a small fee. (Apologies to mellow dude who made up a couple of L-brackets from my specs. The 90 degree bend of mello dudes's did not work out.) 

 

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Right, sorry for the delay, my computer would not recognize my SD card, think I've got it sorted now.

 

In the link below part #9 is called an air guide, it serves 2 purposes, to hold together the top of the inner cowl and to draft air to the oil cooler. It is a black piece of plastic below the headlight. If you carefully remove the fastenings that hold it in place and replace them with longer you can insert some 19mm/3/4" nylon spacers available at any real hardware store then bolt a piece of 250mm long 3/4" X 1/8" aluminum to that as a base.  On final assby I used nylock nuts. From there I bent two pieces of the same material and drilled one side and tapped the other. I then bent an elongated U shape about 240mm long and mounted it vertically with holes drill in the bent bits and mounted the lights to that. Hopefully the picture will show what this all means.

 

I think that once you get that first horizontal piece mounted the rest will fall in place. I do not know the size or mounting point of your lights, but you should be able to figure something out. The trick is to get them slightly forward and outboard enough to clear the fender when the front forks compress.

 

Hope this helps.

 

https://www.cmsnl.com/honda-vfr750f-1990-l-usa-california_model1124/partslist/F++32.html#.X4YLl25FzIU

 

 

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I've had several different kinds of light mounts on my FP:

 

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That was essentially the last time I toured with this bike.  It had little fog lights (PIAA-type, but not PIAA) mounted to the fairing bolts on each side, and the most overkill driving lights you could get at the time: the infamous "PHID" lights the Iron Butt guys were raving about.  

 

P9100007.thumb.JPG.4744b0dd518e753da27bd18590fa1545.JPG

 

Woo-hoo!  A Touratech IMO 100R300 (and a low battery) and a Garmin 2620--state of the art!  Anyway, on that trip I discovered that Europe ain't America: There was practically nowhere I could switch the HIDs on without blinding someone.

 

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In contrast, the fog light were useless.  I liked the mounting location (the stainless steel bolts ran all the way through the light housing, through a 30mm spacer and into the OEM fairing mounts), but they were also mounted a bit high for fog lights.

 

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Anyone remember PIAA 910s?  Again, 200w of halogen driving lights is a bit much for Europe...

 

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At one point I had the silly little fogs mounted on Y2K mirror brackets (I'm a big fan of mirror brackets...)  These days with LEDs there are a lot more good options for small lights on bikes.  These days, I just don't ride at night enough to bother with auxiliary lighting, but I enjoyed kitting out my bikes with them! 

 

Ciao,

 

JZH

 

 

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I second mirror bracket mounts. I found low-mounted lights casted shadows down road. They also aimed light up at oncoming traffic.

 

With higher mounted lights aiming down, there were fewer shadows and less annoyance to traffic.

 

Would be nice if these auxiliary lights had sharp cut-offs. I’m thinking about adapting some HIDs projectors with LEDs. Perhaps using offset-parabola to limit spill and glare.

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I've played around with projectors for years, too, and there are several issues with them on bikes:

1. They're huge.  Now that LEDs have taken off, there will never be any "compact" HID auxiliary lights (the PHIDs were probably as small as it got), and you've still got to find someplace for both ballasts and igniters, in most cases.

2. HID takes time to "warm up", so there's no "instant-on" capability, which is annoying.

 

I do think "bi-xenon" projectors make sense in place of H4 headlights (so there's no warm-up problem), which is the direction my lighting projects have gone since the days of the photos above.  I've used The Retrofit Source since their early days selling salvaged projectors--they make their own compact projectors these days--I can even get RHD versions of some of their units.  However, they won't work on an FL-FP unless the fluted glass headlight lens is replaced or maybe ground clear somehow.  Anyway, that's a bit more of a "project" than I think the OP was looking for!

 

Ciao,

 

JZH

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